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“No.” Esther giggled. “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, Jane. Will I see you again, Dick?”
“Maybe you will, maybe not.” Dick smirked.
“Oh, please come by,” she wheedled. “Come back and see me.”
Dick merely grinned and ushered us out the door.
“Well, I learned more about you, which is always disturbing.” I wrapped a purely platonic arm around him. “You are a very bad man, and I hope you’re always on my side.”
Zeb was not the depressive type, so it was disconcerting to see him in full Howard Hughes mode, ensconced in his mother’s guest room, also known as her Precious Moments display area. The walls were lined with shelves where carefully arranged figurines stayed perfectly preserved in their plastic viewing boxes. As far as the eye could see, there were towheaded, large-pupiled children forever frozen while cavorting in adorable pastel rain slickers. Huddled under a pink chenille comforter, Zeb stared blankly at the wall.
“I don’t like this place,” Dick whispered after Floyd had let us into the house and flopped back into his easy chair without comment. Mama Ginger had taken to her bed. “It’s like all the little eyes follow you around the room. This is a bad place.”
“Well, it wasn’t upsetting before, but it is now.” Gabriel grimaced as he recoiled from the plush Precious Moments angel that recited the Lord’s Prayer when squeezed.
“Zeb,” I whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Zeb, we’re here.”
“Who’s going to do the honors?” Dick asked. “I think unscrambling the groom’s brain is a man-of-honor duty.”
“But I think I should do it,” Gabriel insisted. “I have the most experience sifting through human brains.”
“It sounds gross when you say it like that,” I told him. “And none of us is going to do this. I made a call on the way over.”
We heard Floyd open the front door and grunt. Jolene stepped through the bedroom door. Ignoring the sinister surroundings, her eyes welled up at the sight of her stone-silent fiancé. She curled up against his back and stroked his shoulders, nuzzling the curve of his neck with her nose. “Zeb, honey, it’s me.”
Zeb’s arms trembled, but his gaze stayed fixed on the wall.
“Our friends told me what happened, that what you did wasn’t your fault. I love you, Zeb. And I forgive you. And I want you to snap out of it so we can have our wedding. We’re like peas and carrots, Zeb. We’re different, but we belong together. Did you hear me? Like peas and carrots.”
Like a fairy-tale prince released from a spell, Zeb gingerly flexed his fingers and closed them around Jolene’s hand. He took a deep breath and said, “I’m so sorry.”
Gabriel’s arm slipped around me as the pair of them sat up in bed and threw their arms around each other.
“Jolene, I’m sorry,” Zeb said, his lips trembling. “It was horrible. I felt like a puppet. My lips were moving, but someone else was talking and I couldn’t stop those things from coming out of my mouth. I didn’t mean any of it. And afterward, I just didn’t want to live without you—”
“Shhh.” She chuckled, kissing his neck. “You can spend the rest of our lives making it up to me. Starting with brushing your teeth.”
“Your family,” he groaned. “They’re going to kill me this time, aren’t they?”
Jolene shook her head. “Mama and Daddy calmed them down for the most part. Vance still wants to kick your ass, but I don’t think that will ever change. They are, however, pretty ticked off at your mama, so she should probably expect a cold shoulder tomorrow night at the reception.”
“You still want to marry me?”
“I’d marry you right now in this bed surrounded by these creepy little dolls, if you asked me to,” she said.
“Please don’t ask her to,” Dick begged. “I’d like to get out of here.”
Zeb smiled up at us as Jolene cuddled his neck. “Thanks, guys.”
I grinned. “What are the man of honor and the best maid for?”
Mama Ginger appeared in the doorway, her eyes puffy and red. Tired, timid, and contrite, she was wearing her old blue housecoat, a bundle of wet Kleenex pouched in the pocket.
Jolene got to her feet and crossed to her with deliberate steps. “It’s goin’ to take a long, long … really long time for me to totally forgive you for this. We’re not goin’ to have the kind of relationship the two of us would have wanted. You’ll have to earn your way into being welcome at our house. But I love your son, and I’m goin’ to spend the rest of my life trying to make him happy. If that means the two of us being civil to each other, that’s what we’re goin’ to do. Got it?”
Mama Ginger nodded meekly and stepped out of Jolene’s way.
Jolene blew Zeb a kiss. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, honey. I’ll be the one up front wearin’ the white dress.”
